Freud
and Religion Very simply stated, Freud suggested that people experience conflicts between what we want to do (represented by our Id) and what we are told by society and parents that we should do (represented by the Superego). This conflict is resolved, to a greater or lesser degree, by the Ego. Freud viewed religion as originating in the child's relationship to the father; hence in many cultures God is viewed as a Heavenly Father. In this way, religion reflects an attempt to fulfill our wishes, and is an illusion. |
Civilization and its Discontents 1930 |
"In point of fact I believe that a large part of the mythological
view of the world, which extends a long way into the most modern religions,
is nothing but psychology projected into the external world. The obscure
recognition... of psychical factors and relations in the unconscious is
mirrored - it is difficult to express it in other terms, and here the analogy
with paranoia must come to our aid - in the construction of a supernatural
reality, which is destined to be changed back once more by science into
the psychology of the unconscious. One could venture to explain in this
way the myths of paradise and the fall of man, of God, of good and evil,
of immortality, and so on, and to transform metaphysics into metapsychology."
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life(1901) |
Freud's theories on religion
In his numerous works on religion, written over a span of nearly forty
years, Freud produced a number of different but in many ways interconnected
theories.
|